Wednesday, July 23, 2014

UN HRC Accuses Israel Of 'War Crimes' In Gaza

The UN Human Rights Council isn't sitting idly by while war in being waged in Gaza. Today, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights and head of the Council accused - wait for it - Israel of committing war crimes, and the Council adopted a Palestinian resolution calling for condemnation of Israel and a full investigation into 'violations' Israel allegedly committed.

For cover purposes, a brief pro forma condemnation of Hamas was included for their "indiscriminate attacks" on Israel. Not for their using civilians as human shields, not for using hospitals as military command posts, not for storing armaments in UNRWA schools, not for targeting Israeli civilians or a civilian airport, all of which are war crimes under the Geneva Convention Hamas/Fatah just signed on to and all of which Israel has documented.

None of that is going to be investigated by the UNHRC. Just a brief mention of "indiscriminate attacks" which implies that attacks on Israel in general are just fine with the UNHRC, if they're targeted.

Navi Pillay, a South African, has a long history of anti-Israel activism and border line Jew hatred, including her helping to organize the notorious Durban II and Durban III conferences that were so rife with Jew hatred that a number of western delegates walked out on them.

She is a real piece of work, and it's not at all unexpected that she would spearhead this. In th eend, the vote was 22 in favor of the resolution (almost all Muslim and Arab countries) and one against (the United States) while 17 other countries, mostly EU nations cowardly abstained.

The Palestinian delegate from Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, Riyad al-Maliki who brought the resolution forward and was last seen accusing Israel of fabricating the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens Hamas murdered said "Israel is in the process of committing hideous crimes."

"Israel is destroying residential areas completely. Israel is targeting journalists. Israel has destroyed 2,500 houses. Infrastructure has been destroyed. Israeli forces are targeting Gaza's medical centers. What Israel is doing is a crime against humanity. How many martyrs must die before Israel puts an end to its aggression?"

Martyrs.

As you can imagine, that screed got huge applause from the usual suspects.

Israel's envoy to the UNHRC, Eviatar Manor, responded to Pillay's comments by accusing Hamas of committing war crimes and insisted that Israel was acting as any other state would in seeking to defend its citizens. "There can be no moral symmetry between a terrorist aggressor and a democracy defending itself," he argued.

Even Israel's Justice Minister Tzipi Livni expressed her outrage insisting her country was acting according to international law.

"It is regrettable civilians are killed, but when we call on them to vacate and Hamas calls on them to stay, then that is what happens," she told Israel radio,describing the UN Human Rights Council accurately as an "anti-Israel" body.

The upshot of this is easy to see. The UNHRC will do its 'investigation' and condemn Israel, no matter the reality. They will rely on hearsay, they will slant 'evidence' they will simply make things up if they have to. That's what they're there for.

Israel will issue a rebuttal, which will be ignored. And the entire exercise will have no real effect but to deepen Israel's distrust of the UN and make them less and less willing to cooperate with it.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met today with the UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon to protest UNRWA allowing Hamas to store rockets and other weaponry in UNRWA schools..and the fact that UNRWA, once it was caught doing it 'resolved' the situation by turning the rockets over to Hamas, a terrorist group so that they could be fired against Israeli civilians.

Lieberman told Ban that it was inexcusable for a UN organization to allow a terrorist group to endanger Palestinian children by using a school for a weapons depot and then to turn the rockets over to Hamas so they could endanger Israeli children.

Ban had no official response.

This is what the UN has degenerated into...a shill for terrorist groups and a haven for anti-semitism.

6 comments:

As I argue in http://thewordenreportinternationalrelations.blogspot.com/2014/07/hardly-fair-fight-israel-and-gaza.html, the extreme imbalance in the respective death tolls suggest the sort of a fight that, were it in boxing, the referee would have called. Why then does the international community have such tolerance for unfairness? I argue that national sovereignty is one reason, but also how our species handles having power.

Dr, Worden,This isn't 'a boxing match'. It is an attack on one nation by a genocidal terrorist group with the goal of killing as many Jews as possible.Hamas isn't following any rules,in case you haven't noticed.

The fact that the Israeli death toll is less is simply because Israel has built shelters for its people and invested in Iron Dome, while Hamas uses it's people as human shields, embeds its fighters and missile launching sites in civilian areas like hospitals, homes and schools to deliberately maximize civilian casualties for propaganda purposes and what shelters it has built are reserved for the fighters and Hamas leaders.

Would it suit you better if Israel was like Hamas and there were a lot more dead Jews?

I normally try and be respectful to people's opinions, particularly when they don't take refuge in anonymity. But this is one of the most asinine and ridiculous comments I've ever seen on this site, as well as one of the most morally ignorant.

This is what the UN has degenerated into...a shill for terrorist groups and a haven for anti-semitism.

i will disagree with ff on his comment. that is what the UN has always been. it's just that post war/cold war dominated the stage. don't you remember the occasion of the very first walk-out at the UN? behind the scenes this type of activity was put in place early on. it has only recently emerged onto the public scene. when countries like cuba and rwanda are on the human rights council, WTH do you expect? get the UN out of the US.can you just imagine what the UN will be like when hussein is secretary general?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon Wednesday voiced his full support for the worldwide vigils to mark 100 days since the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram terrorists, noting the girls are not forgotten.